An online journal of the nightly (and daily) nonsense endured by a (former) bouncer at two of New York's most popular nightclubs.

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Mentorship

You learn a lot at jobs you
don’t like. You learn more when you leave them. One of the things I’ve learned
about my old job is that no matter how good my work was—and no matter how much
better I was able to do it than my so-called “superiors”—I was never going to
be promoted to any of the positions I wanted. There were a few reasons for
this.

First, I hadn’t been in the
profession long enough. There were—and still are—some things I needed to learn,
at least in terms of taking a managerial role at the very top. I’m not familiar
enough with what happens on the upper levels there, and I’m not entirely sure
how the game is played. With that said, however, talent is talent. I have some,
so my learning curve is vastly different from those of the people who were hired
over me—who, incidentally, have very little talent, if any at all. Time has
proven me correct here. I could have learned what I needed to learn in a very
short period of time, and I would have done the job exponentially better than
several people who’ve now been exposed as frauds and failures.

I was, for a long time, in a
position where all I was doing was working in my office with the door closed. I
wasn’t networking with upper management, so when promotions were available,
nobody knew who the fuck I was with regard to the positions I wanted. If I had
an employee like me, however, I’d be scared, too. I don’t blame anyone for
trying to keep me occupied. This was an excellent strategy, and probably the
only smart thing any of my “bosses” ever did.

Finally, the upper level of
management at my old company—and particularly the CEO—has a very negative
opinion of the people who work there. They refuse to promote from within,
because the CEO thinks there must be something wrong with you if you’re already
working there. In most cases, he has a point.

When one of my “bosses”
left, the company hired someone over me. That guy became my “boss.” His
credentials were dubious, his resume was very thin, and as I came to find out,
he wasn’t very good at his job—which makes this story even funnier.

The day he arrived, he
called the staff into his office for one-on-one introductory meetings. When my
turn came, he read over my record and history, looked me in the eye, and said,
with a straight face, “I’m really looking forward to mentoring you.”

Now, I don’t really know how
to write the rest of this without going into specific examples of why this was
so absolutely fucking absurd. I can’t do that, because I’d likely be opening myself
up to a lawsuit or three—although I’d take great pleasure in that, because
nothing would amuse me more than watching these mediocrities attempt to justify
themselves and their mediocrity in open court.

I’m aware that this analogy
will sound arrogant, but this was the equivalent of the Miami Heat signing
Kwame Brown, who promptly walks up to Lebron James and says, “Hi, Lebron. I
know you’re a pretty good player, but I’ve been around a few years longer than
you, so I’m really looking forward to teaching you how to play basketball.”

I may not have been the
Lebron James of my company—close e-fucking-nough, though—but in this case, the
disparity in talent was essentially the same. In other words, this guy,
although I didn’t dislike him personally, was one of the most delusional human
beings I’ve ever met—a condition that seemed to have reached epidemic
proportions with several other people within the company’s offices by the time
I left.

I don’t typically revel in
other people’s misfortune, especially when it comes to losing one’s means of
support, but since so many of these idiots have been working on borrowed time
for so long, it promises to be very amusing to me when they’re out learning
what it’s like to compete in the real world with people who actually know what
they’re doing.